The Return of the Relics

A long Greek drama came closer to its end last week when the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles agreed to return to Greece two ancient artifacts: a 2,400-year-old tombstone and a 6th century B.C. marble relief of women offering gifts to a goddess. For decades, Greece has noisily lobbied for the return of relics--especially the British Museum's Elgin Marbles, which were stripped from Athens' Parthenon in the early 1800s. Its efforts got a big boost last year, when Italian authorities put former Getty antiquities curator Marion True on trial for trafficking in looted works. Then in February, New York City's...